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The Tale of Righteous Atonement
Friday, February 28th, 2442: Diesa Ironfist (Dwarven Fighter) and Shenron Nightfury (Blue Draconian Fighter) wake up in opposite cells aboard the Covenant prison ship Righteous Atonement. The Righteous Atonement is a decrepit rust bucket, barely managing to stay together, which is equipped with dated technology. The Righteous Atonement is transporting prisoners to a mining colony at the edge of covenant controlled space. The prison bay is in the back of the ship, and consists of two sides that have 10 cells stacked on top of each other, in rows of 10 (for a total of 200 cells). A gravity sled is used to hand out meals, and normally a slave assists while a bugbear soldier stands guard, in the event that anyone would think to try escaping. That evening, Diesa, Shenron and many other able-bodied prisoners are discreetly given an anti-matter dagger in their loaves of bread as part of their meal. This was hidden by a halfling slave who was the cook on the ship. The next morning, while their breakfast meal is being handed out, Diesa attempts to break free when her energy barrier is deactivated for her meal to be passed into her cell. Diesa goes to stab the Bugbear and fails and is thrown back into her cell. The bugbear decides to eat the loaves of bread that morning, taunting the other prisoners. A few minutes later when Shenron is about to be given his meal, he attacks. He goes to stab his captor (a bugbear) and succeeds. Meanwhile, the halfling slave helping to hand out the food goes to tackle the bugbear, but is unsuccessful and her neck is promptly snapped and her body thrown to the floor, 50 feet below. The bugbear is stabbed again, but when he attempts to shoot Shenron he fails and an errant plasma bolt from his blaster impacts into a neighboring cell's energy emitter. This causes that cell's energy barrier to fail, and the elvish prisoner inside jumps over and attacks the bugbear. Together, they kill the bugbear, and the prisoner releases everyone from their cells while also claiming the bugbear's plasma rifle. Another 8 prisoners armed with anti-matter daggers meet Diesa, Shenron and the elvish prisoner on the bottom floor of the cellblock. The elvish prisoner goes first to scout the corridor beyond the cellblock, and ducks back just in time to not be killed, but he is scorched by plasma from guards outside. Diesa and Shenron both take 4 guards each and clear the hallway, before making their way to storage and reclaiming their gear. They then clear the rest of the ship, starting with the quarters where they executed sleeping crew members who had been given overdoses of a sleep aid in their meal the night before. They then killed the engineer, and moved to the bridge, where the captain and his two bodyguards were stationed. All but one of the eight prisoners assisting Diesa and Shenron died taking the ship, and the Elvish Prisoner was struck in the head by a club that the bugbear captain accidentally tossed away, putting the Elvish Prisoner into a coma that would likely last until reaching a proper medical facility. Diesa and Shenron were able to put together a bridge crew and find an elderly Elvish woman who could handle engineering, and with her help they decided to try to fly the Righteous Atonement out of covenant controlled space. Their new pilot was a Pixie named Astra Snowbelle. They were dangerously low on fuel, and made a few jumps through lesser-patrolled covenant space to get to an aging covenant-controlled fuel dump space station. These kind of fuel dumps were rarely used, as most ships didn't require secondary fuel outside of an engineer's magic, but this one was still operational. The elderly elvish engineer tried to deceive the covenant on-board the full-dump that they were supposed to be their, but failed miserably. A fight ensued, and while Astra did her best to dodge incoming plasma shots and Diesa and Shenron manned the two turrets on the prison ship, the cell-block part of the ship was breached by the plasma-turrets on the fuel dump space station, killing the 20 sick prisoners inside (they were kept in the cell block because they might have been contagious). After the fight ended when the Righteous Atonement disabled all of the space station's turrets, they were given a surrender signal and able to fuel their ship. Shenron went on a space walk to destroy the bolts keeping the cellblock part of the ship attached, and they were able to increase their fuel efficiency due to the lower mass of the ship. They then performed another sequence of jumps and were able to exit covenant patrolled space, arriving at an abandoned, powered down fuel dump partially inside an asteroid. Astra, Diesa and Shenron all got out and went to turn on the fuel dump's reactor, but were assaulted multiple times by Shadows. They were able to kill the shadows and turn the reactor on and then fuel their ship up one more time, before leaving the fuel dump and jumping again, finally reaching a friendly Maw station.